What England need to do to finally win a trophy?

So England have begun the road to Brazil 2014 with a 5-0 win in Moldova and a 1-1 draw at Wembley against Ukraine. Yet again, there have been questions asked about whether the 3 lions can actually go on and win the World Cup in Brazil. Every time England have gone into a tournament, the expectations have been sky high.

Going into Euro 2012, there was no expectations, we were’t even guaranteed to get out of the group because Roy Hodgson had only been England manager for just over a month. However, as soon as we got out of the group as winners, we were all of a sudden one of the favourites to win. The media thought that we can beat Italy, Germany always lose in the semi final of tournaments, and we beat Spain 1-0 in the November before the tournament.

Roy Hodgson has started to bring in young players into the squad such as Tom Cleverley, Ryan Bertrand, Jack Butland, Kyle Walker, Raheem Sterling and Alex Oxlade Chamberlain. However, we are still relying on the old players like Lampard, Gerrard and Terry, and they can’t carry on playing forever. Hodgson has brought Carrick into the squad but he is 32 years old, so he isn’t young either so those players will probably retire after Brazil 2014.

Also, it seems that the whole country relies on Wayne Rooney to get the goals for England, but I personally think that he isn’t as good as people think he is for England. He doesn’t seem to score a lot of goals for England, and if he does score goals, they aren’t world class. It seems that we haven’t got a back up if he is injured. Sturridge and Welbeck have come in, but they don’t have the quality for the big games if we play Brazil or Spain for example. Jermain Defoe has started brightly this season but he is pushing 30 years old so he can’t go on for much longer at this level either.

Soon enough we need to get a whole new young, world class team if we are going to compete against the likes of Spain and Germany for the World Cup. We need to teach our players and young children the modern game, which is passing the ball around with the full backs as the new wingers. The modern game doesn’t involve as much width as it used to.

Germany and Spain have got their attacking full backs with Lahm, Boateng, Arbeloa and Jordi Alba. As we saw at Euro 2012, Spain used Cesc Fabregas as their false number 9, this shows that the game is using more midfielders. The 4-4-2 formation won’t exist in a couple of years time; the new formation will be 4-2-2-1-1 or 4-2-2-2. We need to adapt to the passing game to get where we want and need to be in the world rankings.

With Tom Cleverley, Bertrand, Chamberlain etc, we expect them to be top class players after only a few caps to show for themselves. I can’t see that Cleveley or Bertrand will match up with the likes of Lampard or Terry in two years. All of those young players Hodgson has brought in have got potential, but we need to make sure that we build them up slowly by using them in friendlies, the world cup qualifiers and use them as much as we possibly can. Then hopefully at the next Euros or in Russia 2018 we will be able to compete and be one of the actual favourites to win the whole thing.